


these memories are ours to keep

by orphan_account



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Minor Character, Pre-Canon, Relationship Study, Vignettes, introducing: crackships you have never heard of before, some things are based on canon, some things are based on headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 11:46:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15640104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There was a Brakebills, a whole universe really, before Quentin Coldwater arrived and spun it on its axis.





	these memories are ours to keep

**Author's Note:**

> Because I love fic centered around minor characters who never get their due in canon.

Josh hadn't always been the exuberant, confident party animal slash part time entrepreneur — the selling of baked goods that let you see into other dimensions is a respectable business, thank you very much — he was today. Back when he first stepped onto the vast manicured lawn of Brakebills, he was merely a meek kid with wonderment shining in his eyes. 

He had to credit Victoria for part of his development, his blossoming into this lovable strange flower. Before they were a couple, before they even realized they were mutually attracted to each other, they were friends. Especially at the beginning of their first year, when things were hectic and crazy and still took time to get used to, they were each other's rock and much needed respite. They were quite literally attached at the hip, their arms linked together as they walked down the school halls and across campus; Victoria's wavy long hair swaying about her shoulders as she laughed at whatever Josh said, which for her was an act as frequent as breathing, because he was hilarious.

So to anyone who payed attention to them, it came as no surprise that they would end up falling for each other. Some people had even placed bets on whether they would get together or not. Both of them were quite popular, but especially Josh, which was a new, but thrilling experience for him, because back in high school, he was the designated nerd. Now Josh wasn't the most popular guy on campus, or popular the way a conventionally handsome jock wearing a Letterman jacket would be, but he enjoyed the kind of popularity that felt as fitting and comfortable as tailored clothing.

The Legend of Josh Hoberman was one that would persist at Brakebills for years to come, his memory kept alive by way of jokes told at bonfires and table wood carvings in the library.

-

It was probably weird and unnatural for the person you liked the most at an academic setting to not be a fellow student, but your teacher, your  _mentor_. Now, don't get it twisted, Marina wasn't attracted to Henry. God no, she had taste. Classy, refined taste, standards higher than the Empire State, but she just couldn't connect with any of the other students, male or female. 

Truth be told, no matter how cocky it sounded, Marina was amazing, gifted, talented; a miracle personified, and the rest of the student body consisted of mediocrity stuffed into cheap mason jars.

The fact that she was a Knowledge student who lived in the attic above the library played perfectly into her cards; Knowledge students weren't as rare as Travelers, but they also weren't a dime a dozen like the Physical kids. Most Knowledge students kept to themselves, not bothering with unnecessary superficial social interactions. Marina would rather swallow her own tongue before engaging in small talk with some of the creatures that attended this school.

So even though she didn't like most people, she liked Henry and enjoyed his company, to the point of joking around with him and diving into topics that extended beyond the study of magic.

With him, she felt less like a self-centered, power-hungry monster, and more like a girl. Like a simple girl with atoms of unencumbered magic flowing through her veins. She didn't have many memories of her father, most of them were faint and tenuous, but she felt a lot like that in the ones she could recall.

-

Poppy knew she was a jerk. People told her to her face more than once, and she never once tried to deny their accusations. Because she knew who she was. And she didn't mind. She tried changing her ways before, but change never stuck with her. If people were honest with themselves, they would admit that people were incapable of change. They may adapt to their surroundings, or lie, or put on an act, but at their core they always stayed the same. That was Poppy's philosophy at least.

As a result, the fact that she became friends with Josh and Victoria — in a Three Musketeers, thick as thieves sort of way — was deeply shocking, and defying at least a few laws of the universe. Because Josh and Victoria were good and pure and warm at their core, all things that Poppy wasn't. If anything, they should've clashed, like a bull slamming into a wall, but instead, they worked. The three of them created a kind of perfect symmetry.

Josh and Victoria always looked interested, never bored, when Poppy started sputtering and gushing about dragons. Whenever the voices got to Victoria, Josh and Poppy were at either side of her, comforting her. Josh's adventures in experimental baking were always encouraged, even after that one time a red velvet cupcake turned Poppy into a ginger tabby cat (he swore up and down that somebody must've messed with his recipe).

Poppy sometimes felt like the third wheel, admittedly. At the end of the day, Josh and Victoria were her friends, but they were also a couple, and they didn't shy away from acting like one.

Maybe that's why she slept with Josh in Fillory.

She really was terrible.

(But then again, she realized so was a part of him for wanting her while being with Victoria.)

-

Henry Fogg had more than one relationship in his life, but he only fell in love once.

With a petite, feisty pixie, who had sun-kissed skin and luscious locks. He came alive at her touch, like she was infusing him with golden light that trickled through his every pore. She giggled like a Mozart symphony, and the way words rolled off her tongue was intoxicating. He never knew you could get addicted to someone else's voice.

But they had just as many disagreeable moments as they had lovely ones. Bigby was argumentative, and she had firm beliefs she never wavered from, which he loved in part, but the hour long debates they sometimes had exhausted him. He knew, you had to take the bad with the good. That's what relationships were all about. And this was his one true love. He would compromise.

Or at least he did, until he had to fire her over their opposing views on battle magic. It had been a messy and ugly affair, and he had quietly thought to himself that there might still be a chance for them when he settled on his decision. But as the situation escalated, and he saw the fury in her brown eyes, he knew there was no coming back for them. Things would never go back to the way they were.

And just like that, the golden light dissipated.

(About a decade later, they repaired things. 

Kind of.

Hardly.

It wasn't enough, not for him at least, and Marina was the only person to pick up on the fact that their reconciliation had left him reeling. Nobody else noticed.

He appreciated that.)

-

Poppy and Marina kissed at a party once.

Marina generally did not mingle with lessers, but she wasn't amish either, and Josh Hoberman was known for throwing the best and the wildest parties in Brakebills history.

So she went, and she drank, and she danced alone on the dance-floor like they did in corny rom-coms, not feeling particularly embarrassed even though she should've because she didn't have a single rhythmical bone in her body, until she bumped against somebody, and that somebody was pretty, and Marina just really wanted to kiss her — she hadn't kissed anyone in a long time — so she did.

The men around them hooted like the gross pigs they were, but the taste of her lips and the smell of her perfume were powerful enough to drown out those noises, and the world around them.

The next morning, both of them were extremely hangover, and didn't remember the events of the night before.

(Josh refreshed Poppy's memory when he woke her up, her body draped all inelegantly across the couch in the living room of the Naturals house, and handed her a mug of his Anti Hangover Cure, but nobody told Marina, so she remained unaware.)

-

Things were good, until they took a drastic turn for the worse.

First, Henry expelled Marina, no that was a word too kind, he _banished_ her, and he robbed her of her most valued possession — her knowledge. She knew he thought he was doing the right thing, the just thing, but she didn't treat him with that kind of understanding.

"You're making the biggest mistake of your life," she spit. "You'll regret this."

"No. No I don't think so," he said so nonchalantly Marina didn't recognize the man she spent countless of hours working alongside with.

She shook her head frantically. She'd never actually say  _Please. Don't._ and  _Spare me. I beg you._  out loud, she'd never plead and implore, her pride wouldn't allow it, so this, and the desperate burning in her eyes, was the method she was employing instead. It didn't work.

Second, Victoria found a way to travel to Fillory and take everyone with her. Josh was excited and proud of her, the two of them jumping up and down on his bed like they just won the lottery when she told him.

Their whole class came along for the ride, bar a few people (the lucky ones, in retrospective). It was supposed to be a spectacular spring break, and for a short while it was, until  _he_  came to hound them, to torture them, to tear them apart, leave them hopeless and stranded. 

 _He_  ruined everything.

-

During the trails, Poppy was the person Victoria bared herself to. They sat on the edge of the roof of the Psychics house, swigging from a bottle of tequila they passed back and forth between them with roped hands, the light of the moon glimmering off their naked bodies. It was a chilly night, shivers crawling up and down their spines.

"Why did you choose me, Victoria? I couldn't have been your first choice," Poppy said. She attempted to smile, but to Victoria it looked more like a grimace.

"Because pairing up with Josh, would have meant having to tell Josh that I am in love with him." Victoria stared at the bottle in her hands. "But besides that fact, I feel like I could tell you that I murdered someone in cold blood, and you wouldn't judge me for it. Wouldn't look at me in a different light."

Now Poppy grinned genuinely. "I'm sure if you did kill somebody, you had your reasons." 

Victoria laughed. "I trust you, Poppy. I do."

"I trust you too, Victoria." 

-

Before Victoria met Josh, and became friends with Poppy, she felt all but sure about her future. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't picture it. Her imagination failed her.

But then, attending Brakebills, meeting the people who fundamentally changed her and the way she viewed the world, a whole movie played out in her head. A beautiful, colorful movie, about her and Josh and Poppy in New York after graduation, living in a too-big apartment they wouldn't be able to pay for if they weren't magicians. Josh baking in the kitchen wearing an adorable apron and gloves, all the books and maps Poppy would carelessly scattered about the apartment, the cool nights on their balcony savoring expensive red wine while overlooking the New York skyline.

Victoria had many dreams, many expectations, and she thought they were conceivable. Tangible. For the first time in her life, Victoria felt no uncertainties about the future.

That was the case at least, until she found Josh and Poppy shacked up together, shattering everything they had together and could've had together.

Just like that, it all went poof.

-

Marina ended up being right. 

Henry really thought erasing her memories, shoving her into the cruel world of the mundanes, fixed his problem. He obviously didn't know Marina as good as he thought he did when he short circuited her life, because she was a fighter, and a powerful, skilled magician, so she clung onto her memories, and got up again, now a lot more ruthless and blood-thirsty than she was before. Unbeknownst to him, he tipped the scales of the universe in a way that bore repercussions that echoed far beyond what any of them could've imagined.

The butterfly effect was in full action. 


End file.
